Detecting Feature Interactions in Home Appliance Networks

Home appliance networks now have the capability of integrating different features of independent appliances to provide value-added services. Concurrent execution of these services, however, can cause unexpected problems, even when each service is independently correct. This paper addresses the issue of detecting such interactions between services. We propose an approach that consists of two steps. In the first step, a model is developed to capture the behavior of the services and the interactions between them and users. In the second step, the model is automatically analyzed to see if possible interactions exist. This automatic analysis can be effectively performed with model checking techniques. The usefulness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through a case study, where several interactions were successfully detected.